Demonstrators say that hurting peoples' feelings is a form of terrorism.

YouTube faces more heat for its refusal to censor "The Innocence of Muslims," a controversial video that depicts Islam's Prophet Muhammad in an unflattering light. The Daily Telegraph reports that 10,000 Muslims have gathered outside Google's London offices to excoriate the company for continuing to host the video in the UK. The BBC reported that the protest only drew 3500 protestors.

Google has already taken some actions to limit access to the video, blocking users in Egypt and Libya from viewing it, but the Mountain View company has refused to censor the video in other parts of the world.

Carrying signs with slogans like "Freedom of speech = Hatred to Muslims?" and "Freedom to insult," the protestors have demanded that Google change its free-speech stance.

"Terrorism is not just people who kill human bodies, but who kill human feelings as well. The makers of this film have terrorized 1.6 billion people," speaker Sheikh Faiz Al-Aqtab Siddiqui told the Telegraph. "You can't just say it doesn't matter that it's freedom of speech. It's anarchy."

But Google isn't backing down. "What's OK in one country can be offensive elsewhere," a spokesman told the Telegraph. "This video—which is widely available on the Web—is clearly within our guidelines and so will stay on YouTube."

The American principle of free speech is not universally accepted around the world. For example, France and Germany ban their citizens from denying that the Holocaust occurred. Google executives have been arrested in Brazil and Italy to punish Google for hosting content that violated local laws in those countries. And of course, countries like China engage in extensive censorship, as do numerous Middle Eastern governments.

Still, we have little sympathy for the idea that legal action is generally needed to prevent people from "killing human feelings." Offensive words are fundamentally different from violent actions, hurting peoples' feelings is not terrorism, and Google deserves credit for standing up for the free speech rights of its UK users.

Correction: Our original headline stated that there were 10,000 protestors, based on the Telegraph's reporting, but other sources give conflicting figures so we have modified the headline.

Promoted Comments

Towards the end of last month Eric Schmidt gave a solid and simple reaction to this. To paraphrase, "The answer to speech you don't like is more speech." Rules exist to deal with truly immediate incitement and outright lies that are directly harmful. Beyond that baseline however the best way to defend an argument is to continue to make it, and to do it effectively and openly. If Muslims (or anyone else) truly believes in the strength of their story, then they simply need to tell that story in a compelling way. Bad opinions are not harmful by themselves when countered by good opinions, something made all the more true by the subjectivity of "bad" and "good".

I applaud Google for not backing down on this. Strong Free Speech protections are critical for free society, particularly as the barrier to speech has fallen so dramatically. There should not be any compromise whatsoever on this issue. Opposing parties are free to make their own videos showcasing their own opinions, and thus pose a true debate and competition. But suppression is a pernicious, intellectually stultifying, extremism inducing, economically wasteful enterprise that has a necessarily corrosive effect on freedom in general. Hopefully they will mature and join the modern world eventually.

6129 posts | registered Jun 22, 2005

Timothy B. Lee
Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times. Emailtimothy.lee@arstechnica.com//Twitter@binarybits

It's a good thing Google is keeping the video up. If they give in to demands like this, where will the buck stop? The removal of all religious videos? Also, everyone, keep reminding others that said video was up four months BEFORE the attack(s).

If the people protesting for censorship had any brain, they'd realize that the only reason they're allowed to protest freely despite having a minority opinion is the very free speech they're protesting. They're barbarian hordes of uneducated sheep, trying to chip away at modern civilization and bring it back to the dark ages.

Who, exactly, is holding a gun to their heads, forcing them to watch this video? They could, oh, I don't know, not watch the damned thing in the first place? Yeah, going out on a limb there.

There was a terrific commentary on this whole thing by "The Onion" when it all first came out, definitely NSFW: <a href="http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-one-murdered-because-of-this-image,29553/>No One Murdered Because Of This Image</a>

Terrorism is not just people who kill human bodies, but who kill human feelings as well.

If your beliefs are weak enough that your faith is shaken (and you are worried about other people's faith being shaken) by someone's speech, then it's time to reassess your beliefs. The movie is terrible, over the top, and ridiculous. The only reasonable response to it is to laugh and then forget about it.

If hurting people's feelings was terrorism then we'd only be able to watch comedians by going to Tora Bora. What planet are these people on. Free speech means lots of stuff people say is going to offend you or hurt your feelings.

That's not to say there shouldn't be consequence to speech which has real results (such as libel, slander, harrassment, or incitement) - but a crappy nonsense video is none of those things unfortunately.

Get over it Muslims! Quit being cry-babies. If you can't take criticism of your religion, you are weak.

IMO, this is completely on topic. Sorry if it hurts anyone's feelings.

While I wouldn't call them cry babies and I certainly don't agree with he video, I have to wonder why Muslims react so strongly to depictions of Muhammad. There's no doubt in my mind that this video was created to insult Muslims, but I'm also thinking back to the calls for death over political cartoons in Nordic countries.

Towards the end of last month Eric Schmidt gave a solid and simple reaction to this. To paraphrase, "The answer to speech you don't like is more speech." Rules exist to deal with truly immediate incitement and outright lies that are directly harmful. Beyond that baseline however the best way to defend an argument is to continue to make it, and to do it effectively and openly. If Muslims (or anyone else) truly believes in the strength of their story, then they simply need to tell that story in a compelling way. Bad opinions are not harmful by themselves when countered by good opinions, something made all the more true by the subjectivity of "bad" and "good".

I applaud Google for not backing down on this. Strong Free Speech protections are critical for free society, particularly as the barrier to speech has fallen so dramatically. There should not be any compromise whatsoever on this issue. Opposing parties are free to make their own videos showcasing their own opinions, and thus pose a true debate and competition. But suppression is a pernicious, intellectually stultifying, extremism inducing, economically wasteful enterprise that has a necessarily corrosive effect on freedom in general. Hopefully they will mature and join the modern world eventually.

Terrorism is not just people who kill human bodies, but who kill human feelings as well.

While killing is a great way to create terror, I believe that terrorism is primarily about creating terror, not about killing. I doubt very much that these protesters are actually "terrorized" by this video. They're upset, but they don't have to watch it. Gathering outside Google's offices and screaming "terrorism!" is a demonstration of a sad, over-the-top reinterpretation of Godwin's Law.

It's called hypocrisy. "I must have total freedom to do anything I want, but you must not have any freedom at all." That's pretty much the way ANY powermonger works. All them freedom-haters, they actually LOVE freedom, as long as it's THEIR freedom.

But, but I thought that there were only a few hundred angry Muslims participating in protests, and they were in backwards Middle-Eastern countries no less.

I'll say it again - people who want to destroy freedom of speech to protect their feelings don't belong in civilized societies. Western democracies should be more discerning about who they let into their countries, rather than opening the immigration floodgates to everyone in the name of diversity. Seriously, whose idea was it to let these assholes into the UK?

INB4 butthurt religious/liberals who think I want to prevent all Muslims from emigrating to the West, or ban Islam, or any other such nonsense in an attempt to put words into my mouth. Hint: I don't.

Never mind different views about the limits of hurtful or defamatory speech: speaker Sheikh Faiz Al-Aqtab Siddiqui is an outright hypocrite. Why? Because speech that "kills human feelings" or "terrorizes people by offending their religious beliefs" covers almost any declarations of a religious belief that contradicts the passionately held beliefs of other religions, and of many non-religious people.

For example any statement one way of the other on or whether the Koran is the word of god or whether Jesus was the son of god or whether Buddha was truly enlightened would deserve a ban by his criterion.

If your beliefs are weak enough that your faith is shaken (and you are worried about other people's faith being shaken) by someone's speech, then it's time to reassess your beliefs. The movie is terrible, over the top, and ridiculous. The only reasonable response to it is to laugh and then forget about it.

Indeed. The old legal aphorism puts it well:

Quote:

"If you have the facts on your side, pound the facts. If you have the law on your side, pound the law. If you have neither on your side, pound the table."

Or, in this case, form mobs and yell a lot. I hope that moderates really work to drive home that requesting bans is a sign of weakness. In fact, in theory it should be considered anti-religious by itself to be opposed to free speech. It's effectively saying that they think Islam is so flimsy that mere criticism or verbal attacks would be enough to tear the edifice down. One should always be suspicious of anything that says "no criticism allowed."

Granted, given that it is in fact a bunch of garbage make believe just like all religion there is a basis for that fear, but presumably the actual faithful wouldn't see it that way and thus shouldn't be concerned.

This is just a wift of the growing undercurrent in the rise of Islam in the UK. They (at least this 10,000) live in this country but don't agree with our principle idea of free expression. You could argue that they are just expressing theirs, however expressing to suppress is not the same as expressing a damning review of something like on Rotten Tomatoes. We're not stopping them making an inflammatory film on Christianity....oh I forgot the last time you had Christian suicide bombers was in the Crusades??

Demonstrators say that hurting peoples' feelings is a form of terrorism.

No, but giving in to "hurt feelings" is. And let's be honest, this is not about hurting anyone's feelings - it's about some groups' extreme reactions to criticism and parody.

If anyone were to kill innocent people over a parody of christianity, would anyone here condone it? How, then, can we accept Muslims limiting our speech?

Granted, the judaeo-christian, western civilization now treats freedom of speech as a given, where very recently said speech had a number of limitations, including religious ones. But nobody should have the right to extend their own right to religion to the point of muffling someone else's speech, however distasteful.

I think Muslims don't seem to realize is that freedom of speech and personal freedoms in general are actually to their advantage. And when non-Muslims threaten to take them away, they are rightfully bothered - e.g. when some communities want to forbid the building of mosques, or the wearing of traditional Muslim clothes in public buildings.

If we as a whole, and by we I mean those people who pride themselves of our democratic values, give in to these threats on this point, what's to stop other groups from similarly limiting our rights? Are we ready to forbid overt displays of christianity, judaism, budhism or any other religion, out of fear that it'll hurt the feelings of members of some other religions? Are we going to burn Salman Rushie's books in order to respect the feelings of those who declared fatwa on him?

Short version: I demand the right to criticize you and parody you, and acknowledge your right to do the same about me.

The comedian Jimmy Carr had a bit in one of his acts talking about what the most offensive joke he's ever done was. He explained how its impossible to tell because offence is TAKEN, not given.

He went on to explain that (having quite a bit of first hand knowledge on the matter from his comedy) people are all offended by different things, and as such there is no way to really identify what the most offensive joke might be because it depends on your audience.

1.4 billion people in the world are Muslim, but that does not mean they were all offended by the video. First off you have to watch the video, secondly, you have to take offence to what the video portrays. Neither criteria is a given for all Muslims. (Along similar lines, I have a Jewish friend who also happens to tell the most offensive and anti-Semitic jokes I've ever heard because he finds them funny).

If we start censoring videos based on offence taken from it, then what's the magic number of people offended for a video to be taken down, and how do we accurately measure that? Is 150k people enough? What about 15? Can I have Justin Bieber's music videos taken down if I claim they offend my sense of decency? Why are pornographic sites not being talked about here? I'm sure they are offensive to just as many religious people's tastes.

There is a hard and definite line between hate-mongering and offensive or blasphemous content. These people are merely confused by the issue (or are intentionally trying to confuse others to further their cause).

I'm curious about the opinions of any actual members of the Muslim faith that may be lurking. I'm from the USA, and from a religion that has had it's share of criticism, just like every religion (and every non-religion. I guess I should say "just like every belief system"). We just accept it as a fact of life. If you're a Catholic or Protestant or New Age or Atheist or ... whatever. People will mock your beliefs, no exceptions. Even a complete lack of belief is grounds for criticism.

So what makes this different? Is it because it's a matter of blasphemy within the religion? Do you believe that your religious standards should apply to all people, even those not of your religion, in all locations? Why? Do you believe that this sort of action will somehow incite violence against members of your faith in areas where they may be a minority?

I'm not trying to start a harsh, critical debate. I'm just genuinely curious. Any lurking Muslims who haven't yet contributed, would you mind responding so we can hear your side of this? I, like most people who post here, probably wouldn't be very sympathetic since freedom of speech is so highly valued, but I'm always willing to listen to a compelling argument.